Mittwoch, 1. März 2017

After the tird plane with deported Afghans has left Germany for Kabul last week, the debate on Afghan asylum seekers in Germany becomes heated. No surprise, we are approaching elections in Germany, with populist parties like the AfD very likely to make their entry into the national parliament, the Bundestag.
The Green party is holding a series of panels with decision makers and specialists this Friday in Berlin (here).
One of the main questions will be, how to get more accurate or purely better reporting on the security situation in Afghanistan that will, if acknowledged by the political class, be equally taken up by German legal authorities. In the absence of deciding on the basis on a recently requested UNHCR report on the Afghan security situation, the German foreign office prefers to trusts its own reports, claiming that parts of Afghanistan are 'secure enough' to have the deported resettle there.
The conditions and criteria of who is driven out and put on the planes is another conflictual issue. So far, the percentage of criminals among the deported seems to be much smaller than claimed by the German authorities.
My modest role in this debate will be try and introduce some elementary facts rather than dig deeper in a debate of heated emotions (here).